ABSTRACT
This Special Issue aims to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the entry of Greece and Turkey into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at the ninth session of the North Atlantic Council held in Lisbon in February 1952. The accession of both countries represented the first enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance in an environment very different from the contemporary one. Nevertheless, the interplay between the two countries in their independent yet related quests to join western political and security structures after the end of the Second World War is still relevant and pertinent to this day. As Southern flank states with perilous external borders facing a variety of threats, both real and perceived, the NATO connection has served to glue them to the West. As Hatzivassiliou states in his text:
As Güvenç and Özel brilliantly suggest that the fears of abandonment and entrapment have shaped the motivation of Turkey to join and remain in the Alliance to this day; the same concepts could be applied to Greece to explain its incentives regarding NATO. In other words, the need to belong to wider processes shaping and defining the West (be it NATO or the almost parallel development of European integration via the institutionalization of the European Union) best explain the perseverance of both countries to remain in and help shape a role within the Atlantic Alliance.
